


Frog and Toad Aren't Friends Anymore

by swordfishtrombones



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1970s, First War with Voldemort, Get Together, M/M, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 09:44:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19743130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordfishtrombones/pseuds/swordfishtrombones
Summary: “Is this really all because I wouldn’t live with you?” Remus is still feeling a little fuzzy, but he’s beginning to get chilly and fed up, and he wants to be on common ground. “Some people just aren’t good flatmates. I wasn’t trying to say I liked Adrian and Mary better than you, or whatever you’re thinking.”Sirius runs a hand through his hair and squints at the streetlight, twisting his mouth like Remus is truly hopeless.“It hurt,” says Sirius, “myfeelings.”





	Frog and Toad Aren't Friends Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> The marauders have plenty of problems in the late '70s but that doesn't mean they can't also make their own!

After nearly three months of awkwardness, stalled conversation, and the creeping certainty that any moment of introversion could (and would) be interpreted as passive aggression, even the meagerest attempts to socialize feel like penance.

Remus still doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. Nothing that should warrant the petulance in Sirius’s voice when he tells him that James is too busy being engaged to go see Black Flag; certainly nothing to warrant the childish _“I won”_ glee on Sirius’s face when Remus decides to be an adult and accept the peace offering for what it is. His best friend is a child, if that is still what they are to each other.

Sirius arrives outside Remus’s flat (and Adrian’s, and Mary’s) on his motorbike with uncharacteristic punctuality, and sits there in the last of the day’s light with his arms stubbornly crossed, until Remus, peering out his bedroom window, decides this is going nowhere and goes down to let him in.

Remus’s flat, which Sirius so pointedly refuses to enter, is on the second floor. The stairway to the front door is narrow and dim. Someone once told Remus that when you hit twenty-five your hangovers suddenly turn impossible, but it’s hard to imagine anything more feeble than what he’s experienced these past few months, dragging himself wheezing up and down these dusty stairs in the days after a full moon. 

Remus doesn’t see much of his flatmates (one more advantage to living with them over Sirius), but on one occasion he and Mary had arrived home together while he was still recovering, and less than halfway up the stairs he was obliged to sit down on the asthma-inducing carpet and try to get his breath back. Mary had patiently waited for him to stop rasping and didn’t ask what was wrong. Ever since, Remus has suspected that she believes something is seriously, terminally wrong with him. Which, to be fair, isn’t untrue.

Outside, it’s a sweet-tasting spring night, the first clear one after a week of pouring rain. The world looks and smells fresh; the world with the exception of Sirius, who sits scowling in the middle of it, the same as ever. 

“You could have rung the bell,” Remus tells him from the doorway, pulling his denim jacket around himself. “It works.”

“We said eight o’clock,” Sirius says. He sounds stilted, like he’s been rehearsing. Which is validation, after a fashion. At least Remus isn’t the only one. “No point wasting time.” 

“Noted.”

“You won’t make me miss this, Moony,” Sirius tells him. “ _Black Flag._ Tonight’s once in a lifetime.” 

“Also noted.”

He can see on Sirius’s face that he’s not done yet; he’s probably been ruminating on all the small commentary he’d make once Remus came down and spared him the indignity of being invited inside. 

Sure enough, Sirius looks up and down Remus’s building, and says, with an air of great exhaustion, “Anyway. _Brixton._ ” 

“Yes,” Remus agrees.

“ _Brixton._ Why not just move to Bromley and be done with it? Probably about equally good if the idea is to avoid your mates.”

Remus wants to tell Sirius that Mary and he had looked around Bromley before Adrian had found their current flat, just to irritate him, but no. He’s being an adult. He looks down the row of brick flats and shrugs. “I like it here.”

“That,” says Sirius, who is married to Camden Town and takes commitment very seriously, “cannot possibly be true.”

For a moment Remus is back to being so irritated, he imagines what it would feel like to go back inside, lock the door, never speak to Sirius again. Sirius would spend the rest of his life turning over their final words and figuring out what he had said wrong, and Remus would finally, decisively be freed from the responsibility of reminding him. But because Remus is trying, and because he doesn’t like to give up easily, and because he’s been thinking a lot about the possibility of the world ending lately and even angry heartbreak looks petty by comparison, he instead walks the steps down to the street and says, “People live here, Sirius.”

To his credit, Sirius looks abashed. Immediately, stupidly, Remus feels a little bit sorry.

“And anyway, it’s early.” Remus steps up to the motorbike and carefully swings his leg over, settling behind Sirius. It’s been a while. “Thought you wanted to skip the opener. Are we eating?”

Remus can feel Sirius relax as he grips his waist, finding the old posture. Sirius’s body is under the shirt that’s under the leather jacket that Remus is holding. It’s the same body that Remus met when Sirius was a wounded eleven-year-old, just bigger now. That thought makes it a little harder to stay irritated. When Sirius acquiesces, he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to pick a fight anymore.

The ride itself is a small agony. It is quiet, which is both a relief and an indication that there’s still a lot to overcome. Remus dedicates himself to sitting stiffly, holding onto Sirius but leaving room for Jesus. The old knot is back in his stomach. It doesn’t seem fair to be asked to wrap your arms around someone when you’re still working through whether you want to touch them at all.

About the knot: here’s what Remus knows. It tends to get knottier when James talks thoughtlessly about great adventures to which Remus was not invited; it wrecks his digestion every time Dumbledore looks at him significantly, as if to say he has great plans for Remus and his very profitable mutation; possibly its favorite place on earth is a temp office waiting room, _especially_ if it’s a Muggle temp office from which Remus has already been turned away several times.

Only recently has he begun to identify it as the embarrassing, stomach-churning suspicion that he is not, perhaps, being treated very kindly. The feeling rises up again now, while Remus stares at the back of Sirius’s jacket, but he does his best to swallow it down. Indulging that feeling is what got them here in the first place. 

Sirius steers them to a falafel shop near the venue, where he pays for both their dinners from the wad of Muggle bills Lily doles out to him like an indulgent mother. Remus says thank you, so there is that. 

They take the food with them to Soho Square. There are only a few other couples about. Sirius sinks cross legged onto the damp grass, halfway into his gyro before hitting the earth. Remus sits acquaintance-distance from Sirius and folds back the paper around his falafel delicately, like unmaking a bed. 

Sirius takes a large bite of gyro, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and turns to look shrewdly at Remus. “Are you going to talk to me, then, or no?”

There’s a streak of orangey oil on Sirius’s hand where he’s swiped at his mouth. It’s this, for whatever reason, that makes Remus begin to unknot.

“You’re the one who hasn’t been speaking to _me_ ,” he tells Sirius. 

Sirius rolls his eyes.

“I’m serious.” He wants to fight again suddenly, if only to get it over with. “You could’ve come in and seen my flat. You don’t have to sit around waiting for me to apologize while you’re the one being a dickhead.”

Sirius looks at him sideways. Remus can see him opening up and closing down again, folding and unfolding like a paper fortune teller. He wants to squint, see what’s written inside, but Sirius’s face won’t stay still long enough to let him. 

“Never mind, then,” Sirius says finally, and a little part of Remus cries out in agony. Sirius stands up, the seat of his jeans damp from the grass. “Be a baby. But let yourself have fun tonight, will you? It’s a big night. I refuse to not have fun.”

And there’s the problem. 

When Dumbledore gathers his ragtag group of anti-war activists (or whatever they’re supposed to be––Remus still isn’t quite sure) and talks about protecting the future, Remus doesn’t always know what that means for him, but he knows what it means for Sirius. The future, for Sirius, is about laughing, shouting, eating and fucking voraciously, having _fun_ until the end of time. Remus doesn’t think it’s a bad goal, exactly. Sirius, who has been kicked out of his home and denied love, has worked hard for his own joy. He devours every moment of living in a way that Remus wishes he could emulate. He groans in pleasure over creamy mashed potato, closes his eyes when he walks into a patch of sun, flirts inanely as if it’s truly delicious every time. Joyful as any gourmand, selfish as any hedonist.

Remus has always expected Sirius to follow his own idiot wants and impulses, but he had assumed his love for his friends would curb that energy if necessary. That belief feels embarrassingly optimistic now it’s had the chance to be proven wrong. 

It had happened a few months ago, at Cyril Cawthorne’s flat, of all places. Remus remembers being high. He had felt out of his body; he kept noticing with placid surprise that he was in different rooms, talking to different people. The kitchen was packed with warm bodies. Remus had been eating something and bitten down hard on the inside of his cheek. He had touched his mouth and found a bright smear of blood, and went stumbling off toward the toilet, with the abstract thought of hygiene and running water. 

If he’s certain of one thing, it’s that he hadn’t _met_ Sirius in the hallway; Sirius had followed him. Sirius had peeled away from James’s side and come to Remus’s instead. Sirius was the one who held onto Remus’s shoulders (he remembers being held) and put him against the wall, mumbling _“Lemme see”_ and squinting at Remus like a playtime doctor. 

Being moved around was nice. Sirius was very obviously drunk, and Remus was floating somewhere a foot or two above his own head. He had had dreams like this. _Finally_ , he had thought, feeling sleepy and happy; Sirius and he were meeting in the same dream. So he did the thing his dream self would have done, and opened his mouth against Sirius’s hand. 

Then he was having strange thoughts, real touch and movement in confusion with touch and movement dreamed or imagined. Someone else had the steering wheel inside of his brain; he was imagining Sirius pushing not just his first two fingers into Remus’s mouth, but his entire arm, all the way down into his stomach. He was imagining biting down, so he did, a little, and Sirius murmured, and that’s how he knew it was real. 

There wasn’t much to it after that. Sirius grappled at this side of Remus’s shirt and slipped a warm hand under it, looking for skin. It had felt so good, just that one hand. Remus imagined that his body was made of floating buzzing pieces, and the part of him that Sirius had touched was the only place where all the pieces sat still and came together. He was mumbling out loud, not making sense. Sirius had taken his hand away from Remus’s mouth and Remus had gotten a flash of his own blood on Sirius’s hand. Sirius’s forehead was heavy on Remus’s shoulder. 

And then Georgie Abbott had come down the hall looking for the toilet, and Remus had woken up suddenly and realized that what they were doing, whatever they were doing, was a very unwise idea. They had let Georgie pass, and then Remus pushed at Sirius, mumbling for him to stop, and Sirius had whined and said, “C’mon.”

It’s the _“C’mon”_ that keeps coming back to Remus. He has replayed it so many times, in so many moods, he gets further and further from whatever initial emotion it provoked. That feeling couldn’t have been anything too good, anyway, because he folded himself back into the crowd before they could get to any deeper touch or (thank Christ and God forbid) a kiss. 

But it had been unmistakable. Remus has been collecting moments of lingering eye contact for years, like a prospector sifting greedily through a pan of shiny stones; and this, at last, was something different. Sirius had put his fingers into Remus’s mouth, and Remus had liked it, and everyone knew it. 

But none of that was the worst part. The worst part (the part that now makes Remus wonder if holding onto Sirius as they ride a motorbike could constitute self-destruction) is that two weeks after the party, when Remus’s flat had flooded and he had begun searching for a new one, Sirius had suggested over breakfast at Lily and James’s that they should look together. Sirius had lived alone for two years and claimed to be sick of it, and James had exclaimed merrily at what a good idea it was, and Remus had found no way of explaining to his friends why the idea was at best thoughtless and at worst cruel.

And now Sirius is eating a gyro next to him, grousing because Remus doesn’t want to play anymore. Looking at Remus like he genuinely doesn’t know what has changed.

Maybe, for Sirius, the answer is nothing.

Remus finishes his falafel and crumples the foil in his hand. “I do let myself have fun,” he says.

Sirius makes a noise of disbelief. A new trickle of grease runs down his wrist and he licks it up, gets a strand of black hair caught between his lips. Remus tries not to stare at his tongue. Given the chance, Remus could bite him again. 

+++

The opening band is Chelsea, who Sirius has seen before and virulently dislikes. It’s impressive to Remus that he manages to hold this opinion so firmly, with the same upturned-nose air that one of Remus’s elderly aunts might affect when asked to comment on Tchaikovsky. 

By the time the opener should be wrapping up their set, Sirius is buzzing with excitement, flashing Remus promising grins the whole way to the 100 Club. He stops under the sign, looking straight up at it while other young people in ratty jackets mill in and out of the club, cupping cigarettes against the night.

Remus walks up behind him and pokes him between the shoulder blades. “You’re standing in traffic,” he tells him.

“We’re _standing_ in history,” Sirius says. “Let me enjoy it.”

Despite himself, Remus grins. He likes Sirius this way, engaged and excited. He gives him a push forward, and Sirius goes, willing, to present their tickets at the door.

The doorman is young himself, scruffy blond with just a bit of fuzz above his lip. He’s standing stiffly at the open door and laboriously not making eye contact with any of the grinning, slouching young men around him. Remus feels a twinge of embarrassed sympathy. 

Sirius does not, apparently, share this feeling. “Hullo,” he says grandly, stepping up to the doorman and whipping out the two tickets as if he’s telling a valet to park his sports car. “For the two of us.” 

The doorman looks at the proffered tickets with unhidden wariness. “Don’t think so, mate,” he says.

The tickets quiver, uncertain, in Sirius’s hand.

Sensing an imminent disaster, Remus swoops in. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“Meant what I said,” says the doorman. “You print those out yourself?”

When neither Remus nor Sirius have a response to that, the doorman sighs.

“Look,” he says, holding up a stack of lilac stubs. “Purple. Purple. Oh, an’ purple again. Everyone else here has a purple ticket. Funny you two got the only yellow ones. What are you, the lucky winners? Doesn’t seem likely.”

“It’s got the venue on it,” Remus says. 

“It’d hardly be fraud if it didn’t,” says the doorman. “Look, sorry. Maybe you didn’t know. But my whole job is to see that everyone who gets in has a proper ticket.”

“Well, all right,” says Remus, talking fast, feeling Sirius go tense beside him. “It’s not sold out, is it? We’ll take two, then.”

The doorman snorts, and Remus starts to regret ever feeling sympathetic toward him. “No chance. No tickets sold after the show starts. First band went on, oh, forty-five minutes ago? Not very respectful to the artists to barge in halfway to curtains.”

 _“Respectful?”_ Remus repeats, starting to feel genuinely worried. “It’s Black Flag, mate! Don’t think they care if we give them respect!”

“My job to make sure you do,” says the doorman, drawing himself up with lanky pride. “Sorry. That’s that.”

Sirius doesn’t say a word as Remus pulls him away, leading him around the corner and away from the throng of boisterously laughing ticket holders. They turn into the narrow alleyway between the venue and the Boots next door, Remus casting anxious glances over his shoulder to check the state of Sirius’s fuming. He deposits Sirius against the side of the building, from which a dull _thumpa thumpa thumpa_ is steadily emanating. 

“Don’t lose it,” he instructs Sirius, but it’s clearly already too late.

 _“Scammed,”_ Sirius hisses through his teeth. He peels off the sandstone wall and starts pacing the alley. “Played like a _god_ damn fool. If he knew...gonna destroy him…”

“Sirius….” Remus looks at the two yellow tickets, clenched now in Sirius’s gesticulating fist. “Where’d you say you got those tickets from?”

“From a bloke!” Sirius says, eyes alight with fury. “At a pub!”

“Oh good,” says Remus. “Preeminent source of legitimate deals, blokes at pubs.”

Sirius casts his eyes around, livid and wild. “Gotta kill him, Moony. We get back on the bike, go to the pub, ask around, find out where he _lives,_ he’ll have no idea what’s coming––”

“Sirius,” Remus says sharply. “You can’t go murder a random Muggle for selling you bad tickets.”

“Watch me,” says Sirius.

“Drop it. Don’t be stupid. We’re in a city of six and a half million people, you’re not going to find him. Even if you did, what would you do, jinx him? Break the statute of secrecy? Over some fucking nobody?”

Facing away from Remus, Sirius takes one huge, visible breath, and lets it out slowly. He turns, walks back to Remus, and slumps against the wall.

“I know,” he says bitterly. “What a bastard, though.” 

The mildness of this catches Remus off guard. “Yeah,” he says. “He is.”

He can see the anger leaving Sirius’s body in real time. When Sirius looks up to catch his eye, it’s not with any violence anymore; just resigned frustration and a _what-can-you-do_ shrug. Remus swallows. Something he has always known floats up and presents itself, evident enough to hurt a little: Sirius is not, in the end, a very aggressive person. He’s got the energy, and he’s got the anger. But the inside of him is safe in a way that the inside of Remus is not. Remus has been looking for safe places. When he isn’t careful to guard against the feeling, he wants in.

His mouth feels dry but he makes himself say something. “You want to...I don’t know…”

“Confund the doorman?” Sirius snorts. “Yes. No, of course not. I’m not an arsehole, even if he is.” 

“We could stay out here awhile,” Remus suggests. “You can halfway hear it, anyway.”

“Yeah,” says Sirius. He squares his shoulders to fix his back more firmly against the wall. “Almost halfway.”

Feeling brave, Remus puts himself next to Sirius. 

It’s not really hearing as much as it is feeling, the increasingly frantic _thumpTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP_ vibrating through the wall, and into Remus, and into Sirius beside him. The rhythm pushes through Remus like a nervous giggle, and, to his surprise, comes out in the same form. Sirius looks at him, eyebrows raised. He bares his teeth to show them cartoonishly chattering, and that does it for both of them, they’re both laughing now, laughing at last.

“We came on the wrong night anyway,” Remus says through a snort. “It’s just Muggle workers in there, ripping up the floor. The whole place’ll be a swimming pool tomorrow.” 

Sirius laughs his barking laugh, even though Remus isn’t convinced he’s seen a Muggle construction crew in his life, and the sound settles warmly around them.

“Or,” says Sirius, “tennis. Got a team lined up in there, slamming the wall all at once.” 

“You would guess tennis,” Remus tells him. “Disgusting. Could just as easily be bumblebee night. It’s a band of bees, and everyone in the crowd is bees, and they’re all buzzing fast as they can. All night buzz-off.” He closes his eyes to feel it better, the buzzing.

“Stupid idea,” says Sirius, but he laughs softly as he says it. They’re like that for a minute, just quiet, just feeling.

Remus still has his eyes closed when he feels the unmistakable warmth of oncoming touch, and then fingertips light on the side of his neck. 

Remus opens his eyes. “Sirius,” he says, instinctive warning in his voice.

Sirius’s hand drops away. 

_Ignore,_ a voice in Remus’s head instructs. He leans forward like he’s losing interest in eavesdropping and says the first asinine thing he can think of. “I lost a handkerchief around here once.”

It’s a clear invitation for Sirius to make fun of him, get them back to normal. Sirius bites unenthusiastically. “Sounds sad for you.”

“Don’t know what your problem is,” Remus says, shooting for jovial. “Could’ve been my grandfather’s. Could’ve been embroidered.” 

Sirius looks at him like he’s an idiot, and then away, rolling his shoulders restlessly. 

They’d been doing so well. 

Remus feels shitty and fuzzy and confused. He presses his palm hard against the side of the building, letting the stone bite into his skin. “I think,” he says slowly, “I would like to get a drink.” 

Sirius nods to that, still not looking at him. It isn’t until Sirius’s shoulders let out a little tension that Remus realizes how stiffly he’s holding himself. 

Remus starts walking away, trusting Sirius to follow, and trying not to think about the real problem with Sirius, which is that Remus likes him very, very much. 

+++

Who knows why Remus remembers certain things. Some memories feel significant, some less so. Like fifth year, when he and Sirius were taking History of Magic together, two full years after James had dropped the course and Peter had gratefully followed suit. Remus had claimed it was important to understand the past if you wanted to understand the present, and Sirius had said he was trying to replace every occurrence of an ancestor’s names with the name of a different endangered amphibian, but Remus suspected their real reason was the same: they both still liked to hear stories. 

On this particular evening, the one Remus remembers, he and Sirius had been alone in the dorms. Peter and James were returning late from somewhere––detention, maybe. Remus had been sitting cross legged on the floor by his bed, working on their map, while Sirius laid on his stomach on the bed and read their assigned chapter out loud.

“Neither Homer's Odyssey nor the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius offers any explanation of why the Sirens may have wanted to waylay passing ships,” Sirius had read, one hand sandwiched between his chin and the bed, the book flat in front of him. “Nor does either source describe what may have happened afterward.” 

Sirius had a nice reading voice, smooth and clear. On the floor below him, Remus was prodding the map with his wand, trying to find a way to make certain passageways display conditionally to only those with the proper sympathies. He didn’t have much hope for it, but that was all right. Having something to do with his hands just made it easier to listen.

“They relate only that the Sirens lured foreign sailors to their island,” Sirius went on, “where they sat in a meadow surrounded by the desiccated and moldering corpses of dead men.” He shivered pleasurably on the bed; on the floor, Remus shivered slightly less so.

Remus leaned back against the side of his bed, frowning at the map and chewing the end of his little finger. Sirius’s free arm was dangling off the mattress, near enough for Remus to lean into it if he had wanted to. 

“Neither of the original accounts uphold the interpretation that the Sirens ate their victims,” Sirius read. 

Then, without looking up or pausing in his reading, Sirius had moved his free arm, brushing against Remus’s for a moment, and placed his hand deliberately at the back of Remus’s neck. 

Remus froze. 

Sirius did not. 

“Nor does either source even make it clear that the Sirens themselves actually killed them.” Sirius was stroking his fingers through the hair at the base of Remus’s neck, playing with it gently, like this was normal, just something they did. “The gender of the Sirens and their role in the lives of the early Greeks are confused by iconographic evidence. Although their sex––”

And then the door opened with a bang, and James and Peter were clambering into the room, mouths full of pastries pulled from a bag in Peter’s hand.

“Day olds,” Peter said happily, holding the bag aloft.

Remus wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Sirius’s hand wasn’t touching him anymore. When he chanced a glance up, Sirius wasn’t even on his stomach; he was lying on his back, holding the textbook above his chest. 

For all the nonchalance in the world, James looked them over and snickered. “Adorable,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “There’s a leak sprung in the third floor girls’ bathroom that seems _incredibly_ resistant to stopping. Wormtail and I were going to invite you to come investigate, but we can just as well go alone if you two are busy playing Frog and Toad.”

Remus felt himself flush. James didn’t understand the situation the way Remus did; or else he thought he knew something Remus didn’t. In either case, he was wrong, and had no right to be smirking like that. 

But Sirius had laughed, said something about James being a low life, and had gotten up to join them. Remus got off the floor more slowly, but it didn’t matter. James had already moved on. Unlike Remus, Sirius always knew how to join in the joke.

The really cruel thing was that Remus had already gone through the trouble of thinking it all out and deciding against it. Unknown rewards versus end-of-the-world risks; it wasn’t worth it. But Sirius had never asked what Remus thought. He had just easily followed chances when he saw them, seeking fun, irritated at rejection. _C’mon._

Maybe it was stupid, maybe he had been the stupid one all along, but there had been moments over the past eight-odd years in which Remus had felt like he and Sirius were building a very small and secret place together. A _place––_ it sounded idiotic even in his own head, but that was the truth of it. Somewhere with warm lit windows where only the two of them could fit, and where they could meet when the rest of the world was full and busy. When the others fell asleep and they were alone and quiet and together, Remus could imagine what it would feel like to live in that place full time. 

Lots of people liked Sirius. Some people liked Remus too, for that matter. It wasn’t as if they were waiting for each other. Except that sometimes, in some way, it kind of felt like they were. 

But instead Sirius had to push it until it was ruined. And the betrayal was twofold: half the realization that anything more sincere had been real to Remus alone, and half the fear that he had never fundamentally understood Sirius at all. 

+++

They find a pub close by, new to both of them, which feels fair. It’s small, wood paneled, with that song about riding the freeway with Lady Luck playing from a little black radio above the bartender’s head. 

Remus is teetering; the feeling of Sirius’s hand on his neck had untethered him. He orders a drink without asking Sirius what he wants, and finds his own way to an empty table, trying to reassert enough distance to find the ground beneath himself again. 

Sirius catches up to him with a beer in one hand and two shots in another. He pushes one across the table toward Remus, who decides it’s safest not to protest, and throws it back with a wince. 

Sirius tosses back his own. “To letting scammers live,” he says, knocking the little glass on the table like it’s a pint. 

“Think you’re supposed to toast first, drink second,” Remus says. 

“Can never do anything in order.” Sirius starts on his beer, watching Remus over the rim of the glass. He puts it down, wipes his mouth. “So. James wants me as best man.”

“Oh good,” Remus says and takes a chug of his own. 

Sirius looks at him carefully. “I’ll do it, ‘course,” he says. “But still crazy, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Him and Lily. Wedding. Marriage. Grown ups. If he hadn’t gone around crying after her the way he did for six years I’d say there’d be no chance of it actually happening.” 

“Well,” says Remus. “They love each other.” This much he knows they can agree on. Remus thinks perhaps before James and Lily, he had never seen two people properly in love before. Even after all the years of needling, they’re so kind to each other. 

“It’s not very hopeful, is all I’m thinking,” Sirius says. “Shouldn’t part of fighting be showing what we’re fighting for? Do it properly, get a load of gifts, plan a honeymoon.” 

“You can show them how it’s done when it’s your turn,” Remus says.

“Right,” says Sirius, and goes back to his drink.

He knows what Sirius means. He has qualms all his own. They are nineteen years old. Things are speeding up, timelines condensing, and he doesn’t feel any older for it. He’s trying to learn how to put his body down to defend what is right, and he’s also trying to learn how to keep a job and say true things aloud. Sometimes he feels like a pre-linguistic baby toddling around a warzone, and events like this, James’ and Lily’s wedding, ask him to show up and celebrate the position. He is happy for them, and he is also full of grief that threatens every day to turn chronic.

“I don’t know, Sirius,” he says. “I don’t want to politically analyze our friends' relationships.”

“Everything has to do with everything,” Sirius mutters, but takes the point. He takes another pull of his drink, and when he puts the glass down Remus is surprised to see it’s already empty. “Second round’s on me,” Sirius says, even though Remus is only halfway through his and not particularly interested in a second, and gets up to head back to the bar.

Remus watches Sirius’s back as he leans over the bar, chatting more than is necessary with the bartender, laughing at something. Feeling agitated, Remus makes himself focus on digging a fingernail into the tabletop, seeing if he can leave a mark. 

He could be wrong, anyway. Surely there are people less infuriating, people he could get along with in a polite and simple way. They’re just all out with their own polite and simple friends, having their own polite and simple drinks, probably voting right now to bar Remus from entrance on account of him being not quite polite or simple enough. 

Who he has instead is Sirius. Sirius, who is returning to the table with two pints in his hands, and with his eyes comically wide open, locked with intensity on Remus, clearly trying to get his attention without saying anything.

Remus looks at him quizzically.

Sirius slides the glasses onto the table and leans in like he’s about to tell a secret. Remus leans away.

“I need you to tell me two things quickly,” Sirius says quietly. “First, that I’ve been incredibly relaxed about this whole night and that you’re very impressed with me. Second, that you know I’m not a liar.”

“Those…” says Remus, “are two true things…”

“Good.” Then Sirius breaks into a grin that’s so genuine, it gives Remus an inexplicable throb of agony. “There’s a miserable looking man sitting behind you in a hideous blue button down. It’s him.”

“Him?”

“Him!” Sirius whisper hisses at Remus. “The bloke!”

 _“No,”_ says Remus. 

“Yes!”

“You’re sure?”

 _“Yes,_ I’m sure! Could swear he was wearing that same atrocity when we met, even.” 

“Quit staring, then, he’ll see you.”

“He’s not gonna see me, he probably wouldn’t recognize me if I went up and said hello, self-involved prick.”

Remus shifts in his seat in a way he hopes is inconspicuous. Out of the corner of his eye he can catch a man who is indeed not looking very pleased, sitting glumly across from an equally silent companion, and working steadily at a pint of dark ale.

“Six and a half million people,” Remus says weakly.

“I know.” Sirius laughs under his breath. “This world, I’m telling you.” 

“So,” Remus says, turning back, voice low, “what for it, then?”

“Hm?”

“Pint full of vinegar? Twenty-four hour hiccups? Who’d have thought you’d get a chance.”

“Oh.” Sirius smirks tepidly over Remus’s shoulder. “Good to just watch him, really.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean. Did you see his hair? I’m feeling sorry enough for him as it is.”

Remus ducks his head over his glass, looking into it, not wanting Sirius to see his face. He feels warm, and his stomach is one big knot. 

+++

A few drinks later and they’re drifting back into the night. Remus doesn’t know what time it is, just that the soft blanket of alcohol is wonderful. Maybe all he ever needed to do to deal with his life was to blur it at the edges, rub at it like charcoal, make it even harder to tell endings from beginnings. Everything on earth was unmanageable an hour ago, but that seems silly now. 

Sirius is back to smiling at him as they step onto the fairly quiet side street, smiling privately like they’re good friends and share secrets that are worth smiling about. He’s got both their jackets held in his arms––it’s brisk out, but the briskness feels good.

“Insanity,” Remus is saying, gesturing at the world. “ _Absolute––_ from now on whenever I lose something I’m going to send you to a random pub to find it. Can’t believe I lost my key, ah, well, Pads, do you mind nipping down to The Hare & Hounds, I’m sure you’ll sit on it or something....”

“Don’t get too excited. Not a trick I’m planning to recreate.”

Remus laughs, then looks at the sky and groans. “It’s late, isn’t it? You want to give me a lift home?”

“How’d you know.” Sirius is still smiling, but it’s turned fake and distant. “My wildest dream.” 

Remus frowns at him. “What’s your problem now?”

He can see Sirius go stiff with the self-conscious realization that he hadn’t pulled off whatever tone he’d been going for. His eyes skate away from Remus and land nowhere.

 _“Nothing,”_ says Sirius, which is worse than saying everything. 

Remus stops short under a streetlight. “All right,” he says, bristling a little. “Don’t be a dick, then.”

“I’m not being a _dick,”_ Sirius mutters. “Doesn’t make me a _dick_ if I’m not thrilled at the opportunity to bike to _Brixton.”_

“Stop it.” Remus glares at him. “I can’t keep up with this. It isn’t working for me.”

Sirius laughs darkly. “That’s too bad. It’s great for me.”

They’re silent for a moment. Remus tells himself he won’t be the next to speak, and then counts to five in his head, and then speaks again anyway. 

“Is this really all because I wouldn’t live with you?” Remus is still feeling a little fuzzy, but he’s beginning to get chilly and fed up, and he wants to be on common ground. “Some people just aren’t good flatmates. I wasn’t trying to say I liked Adrian and Mary better than you, or whatever you’re thinking.”

Sirius runs a hand through his hair and squints at the streetlight, twisting his mouth like Remus is truly hopeless.

“It hurt,” says Sirius, “my _feelings.”_

As it happens, this is just about the last thing Remus expected Sirius to say. He almost chokes on an indignant laugh. “All right,” he says. “Well. _You_ hurt _my_ feelings, you absolute prick.”

“How’d I ever hurt _your_ feelings?” Sirius asks, sounding genuinely gobsmacked.

Remus feels about ready to scream, or rip at his hair the way the wolf rips at its fur. He doesn’t want to say it, but he sure as hell needs to say something now. He casts about for the smallest piece of the truth he can find. 

“That––fuck you,” he says finally, trying to ignore the feeling that his stomach has come unlatched and is floating up toward his throat. “You don’t––I know you think I’m a fucking killjoy all the time, but the world fucks with me enough already, I don’t need my friends doing it too.” 

That does seem to stop Sirius, who exhales harshly, looks away, grinds his heel against the gravel. 

“Say something,” says Remus.

Sirius huffs out an angry laugh. “”S like you think the only reason I do anything is to annoy you,” he says, not looking at Remus. “Get less self-obsessed.” 

“ _I’m_ self-obsessed?” 

“Yes.” He looks at Remus now, blazing. “Only reason I do _anything_ is because I want to.”

“You want _everything,”_ Remus says.

He means it as accusation, pointing out Sirius’s fatal flaw, but instead of becoming ashamed Sirius gives him another look _,_ impatient and affectionate, and says again, just a little angry, _“Yes.”_

Remus stares at him. 

Sirius brings his hand up to rub the side of his jaw, where Remus knows he has an improbable spate of pale white acne scars. He looks vulnerable, but when he speaks his voice is steady. 

“I think about you,” Sirius tells him. “And I think you think about me. So.”

The streetlamp is pouring down on them like a spotlight. Remus wants out of it, but he can’t seem to move. He feels dizzy and a little nauseous. 

“All right?” Sirius asks, sounding wary.

“Yeah.” Remus blinks a few times, then pushes his knuckles against his eyelids. “Sorry. Guess I still thought we were speaking in codes.”

“Fuck that,” says Sirius. Remus nods, but he’s not sure if he means it. Codes have been his promise of safety for the past fourteen years. 

The inside of Remus’s throat is extremely tight. It is not impossible that he’s having an asthma attack. “I don’t want to talk about this here,” he says. 

The look Sirius gives him this time is terrible, grim, like he hardly trusts Remus to be brave. “Where do you want to talk about it.” 

Remus swallows thickly. He’s finding it hard to look at Sirius, the way it’s hard to look at any source of real embarrassment or fear, but if he can’t make eye contact all he’ll do is prove Sirius’s point. So he exhales heavily, and forces himself to lift his head and meet Sirius’s gaze. Sirius’s pupils are huge in the darkness. 

“Mine,” Remus says. “See my flat. Tell me it’s good. And then we can talk.” 

Which, it turns out, is finally an idea Sirius can accept. 

+++

Remus’s flat has always been small and dusty, but it’s never felt more small and dusty than with Sirius in it.

He does like the space. It’s all he needs, more or less: open kitchen, small shared space with a futon and Mary’s plants, cramped but functional toilet, and Remus’s room. Realistically, most of his time is spent in his room, smoking, reading, playing records. It’s his hiding place, and now here he is, for some reason demanding that Sirius look at it. 

Remus leans against the little square of counter, watching Sirius drift around the kitchen (as if there is enough room to drift), picking things up and setting them down again. Remus had hoped something miraculous would happen on the ride home, and he would get off the bike confident and certain about what to do. Like most of his plans, it has not seen itself through. 

“You want something?” he asks. “I have…water. Tea? I’d say a night cap, but none of it’s mine.”

“‘S fine,” Sirius says. He’s been toying with one of Adrian’s little Scandinavian girl-shaped salt shakers and slots it back next to its mate. “Weird stuff you’ve got here.”

“Yeah. Well. Flatmates.”

“Right.”

The clock on the wall ticks loudly.

Sirius clears his throat. “Well,” he says. “I think––”

Whatever he thinks is cut off by the sound of a bedroom door creaking open; Remus realizes again, guiltily, how late it must be. 

Mary wanders into the kitchen in pants, an oversized shirt, and one sock, her hair mussed from sleep. She stops when she sees them, flushing faintly. 

“Oh,” she says. “Sorry...just getting…”

“Sorry, sorry,” Remus says hastily. “We were just...we can go to my room. Sirius?”

Which is of course a horrifying idea. But Sirius, as ever, follows.

Remus guides them through the living room and into his bedroom, closing the door softly behind them. 

“Sorry,” he says. “She’s not used––I haven’t had many people over.” 

He means he’s had no one over. Remus has had sex exactly once since moving, and he’s always preferred going to the other bloke’s flat anyway. It had been so flavorless, it was easy, afterward, to decide the only reason he didn’t try to do it again was because he had lost interest. For life? Maybe. 

Sirius is looking all over; at the four foot bed crammed against a half open window, the record covers pinned to the wall, the wobbly side table Remus uses as a desk, the piles of books stacked neatly atop for want of a shelf. 

“She know?” Sirius asks, running his hand over Remus’s desk. “About your, ah, furry little problem?”

“She might,” Remus admits. “Told them my mum’s ill. I’ve been portkeying back home, recently. When I need to.”

“I know,” Sirius says, and then, when Remus looks at him, “James told me.” 

“Did he.” The feeling of realizing he’s been talked about is familiar, but still unpleasant.

“Yeah. About your apparation not working, too. Rough deal.”

Remus shrugs. “Yeah, well. It was never easy after a full moon. Guess I’m getting old. Isn’t twenty the age when your brain cells are supposed to start dying?” He tries to sound breezy, but it does hurt. He still _can_ apparate, if he needs to, but apparating while in recovery makes his brain feel like it’s screaming, and somehow he seems to be in recovery more and more lately.

“Portkey all the time, though? That’s shit too.”

“It was hard to figure out,” Remus says, a little snippier than he would’ve liked.

“I know,” Sirius says again. “Fuck, Moony. Dunno what to say except I’m sorry.” 

Remus sits down on the bed, looking around the room for something else to talk about. He doesn’t know how they’ve gotten here, all the way around passive aggression and honesty and back to eggshells again. “You want a smoke?” he asks.

“No,” says Sirius. He crouches down and crosses his legs on the floor, sitting in front of the bed so he can look up at Remus. This also serves to completely eviscerate Remus’s hope that sitting down will make everything feel a bit more casual. “Are you still angry with me?”

“I wasn’t angry.” 

“Sounds like a lie,” Sirius says, but his mouth twitches. 

“I wasn’t. Exactly.”

“What were you, exactly?” It’s an invitation, or maybe a dare. 

“I don’t know,” says Remus. “I just. I want it to be good again.”

“Me too. That’s what I’ve been trying for.”

“I know,” says Remus miserably. That in itself feels like too much admission. 

“So. In summation.” Sirius is holding onto his ankles, looking like a child. There’s something Remus likes about the way Sirius’s shirt hangs off his body, but he’s trying not to look. “Neither of us want to be angry. I certainly don’t want you to be angry at me. And you don’t want me to be angry at you, I’m guessing. So can’t we just say, all right, that was horrible, and drop it?”

“You always––” Remus says, feeling himself get angry again. Stops.

On the floor, Sirius is waiting for him to go on. 

It would be so easy to slip back into coolness and bickering. It’s a little disturbing, realizing that sometimes, hostility comes more fluently than forgiveness. Maybe their friendship has always been this fragile. There have been days in these past few months during which Remus really believed he’d never voluntarily speak to Sirius again. It seemed like a choice between dragging himself painfully towards some unknown new light, versus continuing to hurl himself down a deep, dark, endlessly intoxicating well. Remus might not have the best instinct for self-preservation, but he isn’t stupid. 

Remus’s friends have been making his heart swell since he was eleven years old. But he likes Sirius somehow, somewhere, different. He likes him in the pit of his stomach; he likes him under his tongue. Odd places that he would never expect light up in response to Sirius. It makes the cut deeper, and the anger harder to carry. The same force that makes walking away from Sirius feel critical to his health also makes that possibility sound like agony. 

“Sometimes when I look at you,” Remus says, and then stops, because no sentence that begins that way can possibly end well. He shifts, looks at the thought through another window, and tries again. “I can see...I can always imagine what you’re thinking. You make it hard to be angry. Because I can see your mind changing all the time. You’re always doing stupid shite. But by the time I work it out, you’ve moved past. Wish you _would_ just let me be angry, sometimes.” He groans and rubs his eyes. “Please don’t say ‘sorry for being so evolved,’ or something.” 

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Sirius says. And it’s true, he doesn’t sound anywhere close to joking. “I know how you are with me, Moony.”

“How’s that,” Remus asks, before he can dread the answer.

“You know,” Sirius says. “Generous.”

“You have no idea,” Remus mumbles.

“I do too.” Sirius unfolds his legs and tucks them under himself instead, sitting back on his heels. “I’m that way for you, too. Which I think you know when you’re not busy feeling sorry for yourself.” 

“Think I have a right…”

“Will you give it a rest? Listen.”

That is exactly what Remus is scared of doing. He looks at Sirius pointedly, trying to control his face. He’s being torn by the strangest dual impulse to laugh and to scream.

“You act like you don’t want to,” Sirius says. “Do you not want to? Or do you just wish you didn’t? Or do you just not want me to want to, is that it?” 

Sirius is going too fast for this late at night, and with every sentence Remus feels like he needs years to catch up. Odd feeling. He’s used to being the bearer of secrets. 

“Hold on,” says Remus, just this side of panicked. 

Sirius groans, tossing his head back. “I don’t _want_ to,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be this heavy.” 

The well _has_ been deep and it _has_ been dark. Remus is not stupid. He is not.

Painfully, trying hard to keep track of the line of his reasoning, Remus says, “I don’t think. Um. There are ways in which I, I am not the best idea. And I don’t want to––”

“Don’t act like it’s––” Sirius cuts himself off. His voice is stuttering. With surprise, Remus realizes, despite it all, Sirius is also skating along on top of a sheet of nerves. “I want you to––I want you to want me. I do. So. That’s it for me.”

Remus doesn’t know what to say. He could weep for that.

“If you want to try,” Sirius says, “I want to try.”

It’s hard to talk. Remus covers his hand with his mouth, and then, with a pang of sympathy toward Sirius, sitting on the floor and waiting for an answer, he makes himself speak through his fingers. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean. Jesus. Me too.”

They look at each other.

He can see the words break over Sirius, for one second he can see Sirius looking blown open and ready to laugh or to cry, for one breath Remus thinks _know the feeling_ , and then Sirius is crawling up onto his lap.

“You sure?” Sirius is saying urgently, arms wrapping around Remus’s shoulders, so close. “You’re not gonna, tell me you’re not about to change your mind.” 

The weight and warmth of Sirius on him is tremendous, overwhelming. This time, Remus is the one to move.

Sirius is shorter than him, but when he sits in Remus’s lap they’re just the same. Makes it easy for Remus to lean forward and bring his mouth to Sirius’s mouth, which opens for him instantly. If Remus could speak, he’d laugh at Sirius for being so eager. Messy.

Sirius brings his hands up to the side of Remus’s head, tentative, and gently touches the side of his ear. Somehow that feels wild in a way beyond the kiss, beyond even the unimaginable feeling of the tip of Sirius’s tongue brushing against his. 

Remus breaks off to bury his face in Sirius’s neck, listening to his own hot breath coming too fast against Sirius’s skin. Sirius smells like a punch to the guts, and Remus forgets himself enough to groan, just from that. Above him, Sirius laughs shakily.

 _“God,”_ Sirius says, sounding awed and thrilled. “I fucking never–– _finally.”_

Remus wants to say _I know,_ but his voicebox is closed, nothing’s getting in or out of there. His brain is turning slow and stupid, he’s floating away again, and Jesus Christ, is this where they could have been all these years? This _place_ , at last, at last. 

His stupid animal brain egging him on, Remus pushes forward. He’s still afraid to touch Sirius’s face, so instead he grabs him at the wrists. Sirius hisses _“Yes,”_ like he’s been waiting for exactly this. Understanding shoots through Remus; he knows what Sirius wants. He’s wanted it, too.

Remus turns them gently until Sirius falls with a soft thump onto his back. Remus brackets Sirius’s head with his forearms, crowding into his space, trying to give him what he needs. Part of his movement is instinctive, pushed by his own desires, but part is also careful, nervous, trying hard to anticipate what Sirius wants. Remus pushes his hand into Sirius’s hair and makes a fist, and fuck but Sirius likes that, shaking and swearing as if all he’s ever wanted has been to be held in place. He looks so good, this little part of him, and if Remus wasn’t driven by such a heedless need to push in as close as possible he’d be moving away to try to see all of Sirius at once. 

_“Fuck,”_ Sirius breathes. “Wait, I want to––”

Remus had let go and sat up at the word _wait,_ scared again, but Sirius just wiggles downward, putting his arms around the back of Remus’s thighs and maneuvering until he’s in place to open his mouth against the inseam of Remus’s jeans.

And then it’s really real. Remus stares down at him, shocked and panting. Clumsily, he walks backward on his knees, out of range of Sirius’s mouth. 

Sirius is wide-eyed beneath him. “Not good?”

Remus shakes his head. “Just––a lot.” Wanting to be reassuring, he gives Sirius a smile; Sirius must like the look of that, because he grins back hugely, and Remus can feel his own grin stretching out and making his face ache until he’s sure it must look entirely crazy. He puts his fist to his mouth to cover the skittish giggle that he can feel bubbling out of him, but that’s not good enough, so he clamps his whole hand over his mouth, shaking with sudden laughter. 

Sirius is still lying on his back. His eyebrow is raised but he can’t seem to stop himself from grinning. 

“Should’ve known you’d be type to laugh at the poor soul who only wants to give you head,” says Sirius, and that makes Remus’s laughter transform abruptly into sharp wheezing. 

Looking pleased, Sirius pushes himself up on his elbows, then puts an arm back around Remus’s neck and pulls him in for another kiss. They’re grinning against each other; Remus feels elated in a freaked out kind of way, but Sirius is in it with him.

“I––” says Remus against Sirius’s mouth, his stomach flipping, blushing hard. “That––I want that.”

Sirius pulls back immediately, looking almost hysterically smug. “You want what?’

Remus groans generously because he knows Sirius will enjoy it. Good feeling, to be what Sirius enjoys. _“That,”_ he says, dropping his hand to touch Sirius’s mouth. Sirius nips gently at his fingers, and Remus’s stomach turns over again.

“Sirius,” he says, maybe the only word he wants to say ever again.

“I want to too,” Sirius says, so guileless it makes Remus feel flooded. “But. Something else I want more, if you want to.”

“Oh,” says Remus. “That, I––that’s good too.”

“Good,” says Sirius, and reaches up to pull off Remus’s shirt. 

Sirius must either be putting years of practice to the test or have had this planned in advance, because he gets them out of their clothes with a speed and grace Remus has never managed. For an awkward moment Remus hesitates, feeling the need for absolute confirmation of what Sirius is requesting, but then Sirius asks bluntly if he has any lube, so that helps. 

The part of Remus that cries out in agony at distance is now humming at the proximity, glowing. There have been men before who took their wands out in the bedroom, would replace patience with magic. Remus has always hated that, but Sirius doesn’t ask for it. Remus wants to touch Sirius. He wants to take his time. He wants to open him with his shaking hand. 

Sirius knows a trick about tensing and then releasing, and Remus feels a frayed, pleasurable buzz of jealousy toward whoever helped him learn it. It does make it easier. Remus had expected Sirius to be hot and tight; he had not thought to expect that Sirius would love being fucked in this bright, grinning, joyful way. 

“Yeah,” Sirius is saying, rocking back on Remus’s hand. He’ll break Remus’s wrist if they keep like this much longer, but Remus finds he doesn’t mind. 

He knows all at once how he wants it. “Here,” he mumbles, struggling again with his ability to speak. He takes Sirius by the wrist and pulls him back up into his lap. “Can we––like this?” 

Sirius nods, his mouth open a little, his eyes heavy, and eases down onto Remus, just like that. “Fuck,” he says. 

Fuck.

Remus doesn’t know how he knew this is what he wanted, but it exactly is. It's good. From the pattern of Sirius’s breathing, it’s going to work for both of them. From this angle Remus can wrap his arms around Sirius and satisfy the other impulse to push his chest as close to Sirius’s chest as he can, trying to get closer and closer, as if there’s any further they could really meld. Wants to be close but keeps pulling back, trying to look at Sirius’s face, desperate for it. 

“You good?” Sirius asks, and Remus nods against him. “Okay.” 

He has wished for unity and here it is at last. He is full of warmth that feels like unzipping, like seeing something secret, like being invited inside. The dots are connecting for him slowly; every physical possibility is just a literal performance of a private and tender feeling. How miraculous, that this most secret feeling, which has until now felt utterly untamed and unknowable, can be so deeply satisfied by following an existing script. Surely it’s impossible that others have felt and survived this, and yet millions have followed these same steps, millions have touched like this and again like _this,_ drawn to this same irrefutable flame.

Sirius digs the fingers of one hand into Remus’s shoulder, and wraps his other arm around Remus’s back, holding him close. He drops his head against Remus’s shoulder and presses the sides of their faces together, breathing heavily. Not knowing why, Remus thinks the word _sweet._

He wants to touch every tender part of Sirius’s body, and then he realizes he can, so he does. Remus brushes his fingertips over the indent above Sirius’ upper lip; then on the underside of his chin; then against the giving softness of his chest. There’s a running commentary in Remus’s head, speaking bland nonsense that still somehow makes him tremble. _This is his neck,_ it says. _This is his arm. This is his chest. This is his. This is his. And this._

He puts his hand around Sirius and Sirius exhales beautifully against him. Remus badly wants to give him something. He is thinking of jewels; he is thinking of rings. Then he kaleidoscopes down to the essentials and is only thinking of pulling his hand over Sirius’s cock and giving him the only thing he actually has to give, which is attention. 

If Remus has ever wanted anything more than he wants this, he can’t remember it now. They’re a perfect system. Sirius pours touch into him and Remus recharges, grows strong enough to pour it back. They could do this forever, he thinks wildly; except clearly they cannot, because his breath is getting tighter and tighter and the sensation is beginning to verge on unbearable. 

“I’m––” he mumbles against Sirius’s skin, and Sirius nods, and Remus does. 

+++

Remus half-wakes in the early hours of the morning, the way he always does. He can feel the pressure of a second body in his bed, but when he looks blearily to his side Sirius isn’t lying next to him. Instead, the lower half of Sirius’s body is turned sideways in the middle of the bed, his heels pulled up to his arse to avoid kicking Remus awake. His head and shoulders are dangling out of Remus’s open window, one hand grasping the frame.

For a moment Remus’s only thought is to grab Sirius and haul him back inside. The sight of Sirius hanging so hazardously makes him feel a burst of panic; but Sirius is fine, Sirius is holding on. 

Remus blinks himself more fully awake, and turns his body slowly to lie next to Sirius, his own feet hanging off the side of the bed. Through the window, he can hear Sirius hum appreciatively as he extends his legs. 

Firmly holding the window frame, Remus ducks his head out, pressing against Sirius’s warm shoulder. It’s not a large window, and he can feel the sill digging into his upper back in a way that will become uncomfortable soon, but for now, it’s fine. He tenses his abs and lets his head loll back on his neck. 

Next to him, Sirius is using his free hand to smoke a spliff Remus recognizes from his own bedside table.

“Thief,” Remus murmurs. 

Sirius grins, looking sideways at him, and exhales a long stream of smoke into the night. “What’s yours is mine, right?” he says, his voice midnight croaky. 

Remus watches the smoke float and disperse into the air, following its motion until he’s looking straight up into the dark blue sky. 

Light is just beginning to crest over a horizon that Remus can’t see. The clouds above them are illuminated in gentle purples and blues, and outlined starkly in the frank light, vivid enough to be surreal. 

Remus turns to Sirius, watches him watching the sky. His eyes are softly hooded, the spliff dangling precariously from his sweet dark mouth. Remus reaches over carefully and pulls it free, wanting to touch Sirius’s lips, still feeling deeply moved by the weight of what he’s been given.

Sirius nods to the moving sky. “This is good. It is a good place, Moony.” 

Remus nods. He wants to tell Sirius that his chest has just about cracked open in its effort to take it all in, but it’s early, and he’s enjoying the quiet. He could follow the sun’s rise by watching its light move and reflect against Sirius’s face, outlining his brow and chin and aquiline nose. Remus will trace that nose with a fingertip later, one more part of Sirius to learn by touch.

Now, he takes a long drag, mouth where Sirius’s mouth had been. He exhales the smoke into the air, imagining it going to the same unknown place Sirius’s had gone, forgetting for the time to think the idea is stupid. He is feeling in love with the world. Golden light breaks out through a crack in the clouds, and he thinks, Sirius is right. It is a good place. Remus has a stake in it all. 

**Author's Note:**

> The text Sirius reads to Remus is actually taken from The Sirens and Cargo Cults by Mikal J. Aasved, which is on jstor here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4351817. Hopefully Mikal would find this gratifying!
> 
> Black Flag played at the 100 Club in London in December of 1981––I just scooted them back a bit. Weird trivia: right after this, Robo got detained trying to leave the UK and was forced out of the band. I am sure Sirius found this heartbreaking at the time. 
> 
> S/O forever to @orestesfasting, my sweet darlin and the reason I am writing wolfstar in 2019. Always just trying to impress you!!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at jonasblackwood.tumblr.com! I am there almost never but who knows maybe that will change.


End file.
